I would not graduate 8th grade today if I had to take the test required of these normal students back in the day. Could you? The spelling part is easier than most of the rest. Arithmetic - do we still teach that? Try a few of those problems. At 'Grammar' things start to ratchet up a bit. Wow.From: http://www.bullittcountyhistory.com/bch ... m1912.html

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All things bright and beautiful,All creatures great and small,All things wise and wonderful:The Lord God made them all.

I think I would have passed everything except the history and geography (which I never liked in my school days) and the physiology and civil government.

Grammar is not taught any more, but it was taught when I was a student in elementary school. I really liked it and was good at it. We had do diagram sentences, know the parts of speech, etc. So even now I could answer every one of the grammar questions correctly from the link you provided.

I am bugged to this day when people say, "I laid on the bed" instead of "I lay on the bed." I even heard a man in church reading the Xmas story from the Bible. The King James correctly states concerning the shepherds: "in fields where they lay tending their sheep." This man could not help "correcting" the text in his mind. He read the text as "in fields where they laid tending their sheep."

When I was a teacher, the Ontario government provided a computer known as "the ICON" to every school. The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education provided educational programs for the ICONS. I recall that one of them was a grammar program. It had questions with multiple-choice answers.The one I had in mind required the pupil to choose between, "Yesterday, the girl laid on the beach" and "Yesterday the girl lay on the beach."The program was so constructed that if the pupil chose the correct answer, "Yesterday the girl lay on the beach" he got it wrong!

Paidion

Man judges a person by his past deeds, and administers penalties for his wrongdoing. God judges a person by his present character, and disciplines him that he may become righteous.

Here's another one you might enjoy. I took my teacher training at Manitoba Teachers College in Winnipeg Manitoba when I was 22. It was closer to my home in Ontario and cheaper than the teachers colleges in Ontario. As part of the training we had to do practice teaching in regular elementary schools.

Once, while I was doing practice teaching, my supervising teacher from the teachers college said to me, "Ah, you're from Ontario, eh?" (Here in Canada, as you probably know, we say "eh?" instead of "huh?").

"Yes, I am," I answered. "How did you know?"

She replied, "I knew because you said to the pupils, "Git out your books" instead of "Get out your books."

In general, Manitobans have better speech than Ontarions.

Paidion

Man judges a person by his past deeds, and administers penalties for his wrongdoing. God judges a person by his present character, and disciplines him that he may become righteous.

You heard it from a Canadian? I am surprised. For Canadians do not even shrug their flag. However, they do sing "O Canada" gustily. Their national anthem is addressed to the country rather extolling their flag as in the U.S.

Here's another story that you may find amusing. I met my present wife in August of 1998 at a summer camp of Ben Israel Christian community. This little community founded by Aaron Katz (a.k.a. Art Katz) is located near Bemidji, Minnesota. We were married in March of the following year. After that, we continued to go to the summer camps at Ben Israel.

One year while at the camp we met a woman from Florida. When we mentioned that we were from Canada, her eyes bugged out, and she said with astonishment, "You all come from Cane-a-da? Is it raaaael cold up there?" I realized that this lady was unaware that at the very moment she said these words, she was only 112 miles from Canada. However, I played along with her misconceptions. I turned to my wife and said, "No. It's not very cold in the igloo, is it Dear?" With these words the lady's astonishment was doubled or tripled."YOU ALL LIVE IN AN IGLOO?" she almost shouted.

Last edited by Paidion on Sat Nov 11, 2017 12:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Paidion

Man judges a person by his past deeds, and administers penalties for his wrongdoing. God judges a person by his present character, and disciplines him that he may become righteous.

I always had problems in English class. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and the like. I was a C- to a D student. I hated it horribly. Now I am so amused that whatever those teachers did, I am finding spelling errors and typo's and grammatical errors in so much of the stuff I read. I must have absorbed at least some of that stuff But... I am sure you all are finding my deficiencies.